In an age of Taylor Swift-level production and stadium-sized crowds, the juxtaposition of Brett Dennen on the cramped stage of a small club-inside-a-pub with little more than his Martin acoustic guitar couldn’t be more stark. It was a breath of fresh air—even if the air itself was thick with London’s newfound summer heat—for the intimate group of folk fans who found themselves no farther than a dozen or so rows from their favorite California songwriter in the midst of his first European tour in years.

The stage and Dennen himself, wearing a blue plaid shirt and a purple bandana around his signature red hair, were so unassuming, in fact, that the crowd barely noticed when he joined them in the room and started to plug in his guitar. As a few muted shouts from the front row signaled his arrival, he began strumming “So Long Sweet Misery” from his second studio album. Although its just him, his guitar, and his telltale voice, he manages to fill the small, dark room with rich sound, playing with volume and finger-tapping to add depth to the stripped down setup.

Walking around the stage as if he’s playing at home in his living room, he launches into the upbeat “Already Gone.” Squinting his eyes behind his glasses as he leans into the mic, it often looks like he’s forgotten that anyone else is there at all. “Whistle with me,” he says to a crowd that will need a bit of coaxing to warm up and join in. “Whatever you want to whistle,” he jokes after they miss a few cues and notes. This becomes a bit of a running joke throughout the night: Dennen patiently guiding the room to whistle or provide crucial backing vocals to his solo acoustic set and the group getting there…eventually.

“I’m honored to be here—I came a long way. I hope you have fun,” he says sheepishly as if he’s just realized he’s actually in the crowd’s collective living room. “Cassidy” and “She’s Mine” prove to be good choices for the next two songs, with the crowd increasingly feeling comfortable to clap and sing along. Perhaps after realizing that this was a dedicated group of fans, Dennen puts them in charge. “I don’t know what to play,” he laughs as fans begin shouting songs from his two-decade-long career. “Someone yelled ‘San Francisco’ and someone else said ‘yeah.’ I wrote down a bunch of songs on a piece of paper, but they’re just words. San Francisco was on that list. It’s good for whistling, too.” The crowd records videos, sings along, and attempts to whistle again, laughing at the inside joke they now have with Dennen.

Fan favorite “Sydney (I’ll Come Running)” fills the room with sound thanks to some audio tricks up Dennen’s sleeve and a little help from the audience on background vocals. “Oh what’s that? Someone wants to hear ‘Cutting to the Chase’? Cool,” he jokes, making a plug for and then playing one of his new tunes. As he starts taking requests again, a couple holds up a sign comically in the second row to request “Make You Fall in Love with Me”—it’s their song, along  with the song of several other couples in the room. “Forgive me, I know the song, but not the key or what chords,” Dennen laughs as he tests out a few things. Despite his brief struggle to get the song going, it eventually flows as if it’s been sitting inside him just waiting to come out. “Check, we got that one,” he says as he pretends to nervously wipe sweat from his forehead.

He plays another new tune, “Seagull,” before leading the room in a sing-along to his 2006 hit “Ain’t No Reason.” The crowd requests “You Make It Easy,” which he jokes would be a great song for whistling. When someone shouts that they don’t know how to whistle, he spends several minutes giving a tutorial that turns out to be surprisingly effective. After the song, he tells the story of the elephant on his Martin (he drew it on the guitar after reading The Elephant Whisperer) before taking more requests. The singer weighs his options before admitting that he’s running out of time and needs to prioritize more sing-alongs. He plays “Dancing at a Funeral”—another song that sounds impressively full and rich despite his limited setup—and “See The World,” the 2021 song from his album of the same name.

“Wild Child” sees the crowd at its peak of participation and when it’s finished, Dennen decides that since he’s in another country, he’s going to tell a story he hasn’t felt comfortable telling until now. He says that last year around New Year’s, he decided to write a New Year’s song. He released “This Is Going to Be The Year” at the beginning of 2023, but despite his intention to manifest that, his start to 2023 is anything but. He took his son skiing and the four-year-old broke his leg. Three days later, while feeling guilty about his boy’s injury, his dad died. Then, as he’s in a fog of depression, someone broke into his storage unit and stole a bunch of guitars. Despite all the heartbreak, Dennen decides he’s going to live out his song’s lyrics: “This is gonna be the year / Something good is happening here / I’m gonna make it true/ Lord knows I’m overdue.”

“I was going to play Comeback Kid, right?” he voices over to the room as he has been throughout the night. “I’m not going to do the encore thing—I’m just going to stay on. I’d have to walk through everyone and come back and it’d just be a waste,” he jokes before playing the familiar first notes of 2011’s “Comeback Kid (That’s My Dog.)” All of the work he’s done up until this point to train the crowd pays off, as they successfully provide the backing vocals needed to make the song work. Before exiting the stage and graciously joining a few selfies along the way, he leaves the crowd with this: “If you give every stranger you pass on the street just a fraction of the love you’ve given me tonight, you’ll make their day. It will have a ripple effect and the world will have a lot more love.” That might even be easier than whistling.